Multiuser Massive MIMO Systems With Time-Offset Pilots and Successive Interference Cancellation

This paper proposes time-offset pilots for a single-cell multiuser massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system and studies its performance under the minimum mean-squared error channel estimator and successive interference cancellation. With the proposed time-offset pilots, users are divided into two groups and the uplink pilots from one group are transmitted simultaneously with the uplink data of the other group, which allows the system to accommodate more users for a given number of pilots. Successive interference cancellation is developed to ease the effect of pilot contamination and enhance data detection. Closed-form expressions for lower bounds of the uplink spectral efficiencies in both the training and data phases are derived when the maximum-ratio combining receiver is used at the base station. The power control problem is formulated with the objective of either maximizing the quality of service that can be equally provided to all users, or minimizing the total transmit power. Since the original power control problems are NP-hard, we also propose algorithms based on the bisection method to solve the problems separately in training and data phases. Analysis and numerical results show that the effect of pilot contamination can be mitigated by successive interference cancellation and proper power control.